Chapter XI.

He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder.

Great blown clouds had floated to the still heights of air before him.

The noise, too, was approaching. The woods filtered men and the fields

became dotted.

As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying

mass of wagons, teams, and men. From the heaving tangle issued

exhortations, commands, imprecations. Fear was sweeping it all along.

The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged. The white-topped

wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep.

The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight. They were all

retreating. Perhaps, then, he was not so bad after all. He seated

himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons. They fled like soft,

ungainly animals. All the roarers and lashers served to help him to

magnify the dangers and horrors of the engagement that he might try to

prove to himself that the thing with which men could charge him was in

truth a symmetrical act. There was an amount of pleasure to him in

watching the wild march of this vindication.

Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared

in the road. It came swiftly on. Avoiding the obstructions gave it the

sinuous movement of a serpent. The men at the head butted mules with

their musket stocks. They prodded teamsters indifferent to all howls.

The men forced their way through parts of the dense mass by strength.

The blunt head of the column pushed. The raving teamsters swore many

strange oaths.

The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them.

The men were going forward to the heart of the din. They were to

confront the eager rush of the enemy. They felt the pride of their

onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble

down this road. They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it

was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time. This

importance made their faces grave and stern. And the backs of the

officers were very rigid.

As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to

him. He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings. The

separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of

flame and banners of sunlight. He could never be like them. He could

have wept in his longings.

He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the

indefinite cause, the thing upon which men turn the words of final

blame. It—whatever it was—was responsible for him, he said. There lay

the fault.

The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young

man to be something much finer than stout fighting. Heroes, he thought,

could find excuses in that long seething lane. They could retire with

perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.

He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste

to force their way to grim chances of death. As he watched his envy

grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them.

He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said, throw off

himself and become a better. Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in

himself, came to him—a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with

one knee forward and a broken blade high—a blue, determined figure

standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly killed on a

high place before the eyes of all. He thought of the magnificent pathos

of his dead body.

These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire. In his

ears, he heard the ring of victory. He knew the frenzy of a rapid

successful charge. The music of the trampling feet, the sharp voices,

the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings

of war. For a few moments he was sublime.

He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed, he saw a

picture of himself, dust-stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front

at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of

calamity.

Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He hesitated,

balancing awkwardly on one foot.

He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he resentfully

to his plan. Well, rifles could be had for the picking. They were

extraordinarily profuse.

Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his regiment.

Well, he could fight with any regiment.

He started forward slowly. He stepped as if he expected to tread upon

some explosive thing. Doubts and he were struggling.

He would truly be a worm if any of his comrades should see him

returning thus, the marks of his flight upon him. There was a reply

that the intent fighters did not care for what happened rearward saving

that no hostile bayonets appeared there. In the battle-blur his face

would, in a way, be hidden, like the face of a cowled man.

But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth, when the

strife lulled for a moment, a man to ask of him an explanation. In

imagination he felt the scrutiny of his companions as he painfully

labored through some lies.

Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections. The

debates drained him of his fire.

He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan, for, upon studying the

affair carefully, he could not but admit that the objections were very

formidable.

Furthermore, various ailments had begun to cry out. In their presence

he could not persist in flying high with the wings of war; they

rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light.

He tumbled headlong.

He discovered that he had a scorching thirst. His face was so dry and

grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crackle. Each bone of his

body had an ache in it, and seemingly threatened to break with each

movement. His feet were like two sores. Also, his body was calling for

food. It was more powerful than a direct hunger. There was a dull,

weight-like feeling in his stomach, and, when he tried to walk, his

head swayed and he tottered. He could not see with distinctness. Small

patches of green mist floated before his vision.

While he had been tossed by many emotions, he had not been aware of

ailments. Now they beset him and made clamor. As he was at last

compelled to pay attention to them, his capacity for self-hate was

multiplied. In despair, he declared that he was not like those others.

He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero.

He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He

groaned from his heart and went staggering off.

A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity of the

battle. He had a great desire to see, and to get news. He wished to

know who was winning.

He told himself that, despite his unprecedented suffering, he had never

lost his greed for a victory, yet, he said, in a half-apologetic manner

to his conscience, he could not but know that a defeat for the army

this time might mean many favorable things for him. The blows of the

enemy would splinter regiments into fragments. Thus, many men of

courage, he considered, would be obliged to desert the colors and

scurry like chickens. He would appear as one of them. They would be

sullen brothers in distress, and he could then easily believe he had

not run any farther or faster than they. And if he himself could

believe in his virtuous perfection, he conceived that there would be

small trouble in convincing all others.

He said, as if in excuse for this hope, that previously the army had

encountered great defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood

and tradition of them, emerging as bright and valiant as a new one;

thrusting out of sight the memory of disaster, and appearing with the

valor and confidence of unconquered legions. The shrilling voices of

the people at home would pipe dismally for a time, but various generals

were usually compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no

compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice. He could not tell

who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could center no direct

sympathy upon him. The people were afar and he did not conceive public

opinion to be accurate at long range. It was quite probable they would

hit the wrong man who, after he had recovered from his amazement would

perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of

his alleged failure. It would be very unfortunate, no doubt, but in

this case a general was of no consequence to the youth.

In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself. He

thought it would prove, in a manner, that he had fled early because of

his superior powers of perception. A serious prophet upon predicting a

flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate

that he was indeed a seer.

A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very important

thing. Without salve, he could not, he thought, wear the sore badge of

his dishonor through life. With his heart continually assuring him that

he was despicable, he could not exist without making it, through his

actions, apparent to all men.

If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost. If the din meant

that now his army’s flags were tilted forward he was a condemned

wretch. He would be compelled to doom himself to isolation. If the men

were advancing, their indifferent feet were trampling upon his chances

for a successful life.

As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned upon them

and tried to thrust them away. He denounced himself as a villain. He

said that he was the most unutterably selfish man in existence. His

mind pictured the soldiers who would place their defiant bodies before

the spear of the yelling battle fiend, and as he saw their dripping

corpses on an imagined field, he said that he was their murderer.

Again he thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied

a corpse. Thinking of the slain, he achieved a great contempt for some

of them, as if they were guilty for thus becoming lifeless. They might

have been killed by lucky chances, he said, before they had had

opportunities to flee or before they had been really tested. Yet they

would receive laurels from tradition. He cried out bitterly that their

crowns were stolen and their robes of glorious memories were shams.

However, he still said that it was a great pity he was not as they.

A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of escape

from the consequences of his fall. He considered, now, however, that it

was useless to think of such a possibility. His education had been that

success for that mighty blue machine was certain; that it would make

victories as a contrivance turns out buttons. He presently discarded

all his speculations in the other direction. He returned to the creed

of soldiers.

When he perceived again that it was not possible for the army to be

defeated, he tried to bethink him of a fine tale which he could take

back to his regiment, and with it turn the expected shafts of derision.

But, as he mortally feared these shafts, it became impossible for him

to invent a tale he felt he could trust. He experimented with many

schemes, but threw them aside one by one as flimsy. He was quick to see

vulnerable places in them all.

Furthermore, he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn might lay him

mentally low before he could raise his protecting tale.

He imagined the whole regiment saying: “Where’s Henry Fleming? He run,

didn’t ’e? Oh, my!” He recalled various persons who would be quite sure

to leave him no peace about it. They would doubtless question him with

sneers, and laugh at his stammering hesitation. In the next engagement

they would try to keep watch of him to discover when he would run.

Wherever he went in camp, he would encounter insolent and lingeringly

cruel stares. As he imagined himself passing near a crowd of comrades,

he could hear one say, “There he goes!”

Then, as if the heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were

turned toward him with wide, derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one

make a humorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed and

cackled. He was a slang phrase.